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Fic: In Which Direction We Are Flowing (PG-13)
Title: In Which Direction We Are Flowing
Pairing: N/A, gen
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: 1,252 words
Notes: Y'all know how I like to mess with time, right? Be warned, this is kind of a trip. Written three months ago for the first edition of![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
hell_quarterly, and beta'd by the incredibly lovely ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
__3amconfession.
Summary: Pause, rewind – let’s try that one again. You’re not doing it right.
Pairing: N/A, gen
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: 1,252 words
Notes: Y'all know how I like to mess with time, right? Be warned, this is kind of a trip. Written three months ago for the first edition of
hell_quarterly, and beta'd by the incredibly lovely __3amconfession. Summary: Pause, rewind – let’s try that one again. You’re not doing it right.
Repetition, repetition, repetition – even the word repeats itself, over and again.
Sam wakes up on November second with Jess curled up against his back, warm and safe. Her tiny face is scrunched up in sleep, and, looking at her, Sam feels like maybe it was all just a bad dream – a very detailed, vivid, horrible, bad dream.
Just in case, Sam slides out from under the warm sheets and pads into the kitchen, looking for their cordless phone. He finds it hiding under a pile of junk mail, and dials the number he’s known by heart since he left for Stanford.
“Sam?” a husky voice on the other end of the line says. Sam realizes he’s probably woken Dean up, but he can’t make himself care because he’s never been so relieved to hear his brother’s voice in his entire life.
He takes a deep breath and tries to calm his racing heart. “Dean, what’s going on?”
“Stay where you are,” Dean says, suddenly urgent, and there’s a rustling sound – bedclothes – like Dean’s getting ready in a hurry. “I’m coming to you. Just. Stay where you are, Sam. Don’t go out.”
“Dean, what –”
Dean cuts him off with a strangled noise. “I’ll be there in four hours, ok? Take a shower, read a book, do something; stay inside.” Sam hears the Impala roar to life. “Salt the windows and doors.”
Sam finds a canister of salt under the kitchen sink and lays a heavy trail of it along all the windowsills and doorjambs – the one leading to the bedroom, too, even though it hurts him to even think such a thing.
When it’s done, he feels a little better, more safe and contained, but he still can’t stomach the idea of stripping down and taking a shower, so he sets himself up on the couch in the living room with one of the kitchen knives and a newspaper.
He manages a cursory glance at the front page of the New York Times, and then he can’t concentrate on it at all. Dean’s coming, he repeats to himself. It’s going to be fine.
Jess wanders in and out of the room, shooting him concerned, wary looks after he snaps at her the first few times she tries to approach him. Salt doesn’t work on everything.
Almost exactly four hours after the call, Dean thumps on the door to Sam’s apartment, yelling for him to open the fuck up. Sam fairly leaps for the door, throwing it open and pulling Dean inside by the front of his jacket.
“Dean, tell me what’s happ –”
Dean cuts him off again, eyes wild, and pulls him in for a quick, tight hug. “God, Sam, you have no idea. No idea. Do you even remember?”
His brother’s hand is wound tightly in Sam’s shirtfront, knuckles white from how hard his fingers are clenched together. Jess is standing in the doorway to the kitchen in her smurf shirt and tiny shorts – for a second, she’s backlit by fire and screaming, but he blinks and it’s gone.
“Dean, I. Man, you need to tell me what’s going on,” Sam says, low so Jess can’t hear. “Something’s not right. What don’t I remember?”
The frantic energy in Dean from a minute ago stills, distills down to something more focused, more deadly. He looks Sam in the eye, and that same split-second flash of something happens again. “They’re listening. They’re listening.”
The whole room stops for a second, paused like a tape, and then the screen goes white with snow.
Over and again, over and again – play it back.
Sam comes to on the floor of his apartment’s kitchen, Jess crouched at his side, and an icepack on his head. He feels fuzzy, urgent in a way he can’t explain and has no reason for. They’re listening.
Jess tries to keep him down, telling him in her sweet way to stay still or he’ll make his head worse, but he can’t. Something is off – something big.
“Get me the phone,” he grits out, holding his forehead. Jess opens her mouth to argue. “Get me the goddamn phone, Jess.”
The phone rings even before Jess’s hand touches it, and despite his head, Sam’s on his feet before the second tone, holding his hand out for it.
“Sam,” Dean says. His voice sounds tinny through the strange static. “Sam, don’t go outside, ok? They rewound it somehow, but I’m coming. We’ll figure out how to stop this.”
“Tell me what’s going on, Dean – no, listen to me. You can talk and drive at the same time, tell me.”
There’s a long silence on the other side of the line, and Sam can’t even hear the comforting beat of music in the background, only static. Then, Dean makes a hissing sound and says, “This isn’t real, Sam. None of this is real, you have to wake up.”
The kitchen around Sam goes funny, colors inverting and static creeping in along the edges of his vision. “Wake up? How do I wake up, Dean?”
This time, when Sam – regains consciousness? He’s not sure that’s exactly what’s going on – he’s standing up, the cordless phone in his hand, and Jess is at his feet with a bruise blooming red over her cheek in the shape of a hand.
He looks at his own hand, horrified. The phone rings, shrill and startling in the silence, and he fumbles for a second before he manages to hit the ‘talk’ button.
“Sam, listen to me. We haven’t got much time,” Dean says, and he sounds terrified. “Find the source, ok? You have to find the source and destroy it or you will never wake up. Understand me? Remember this.”
The line is dead before Sam can even get out his brother’s name. The world sways dangerously, or maybe that’s just Sam. Find the source, find the source – but where would the source be? Somewhere he could see? Outside the apartment?
He doesn’t realize he’s pacing until Jess is standing in front of him, one tiny hand on his arm and the other spread across his chest. Her cheek is fine, showing no sign of ever having been touched.
A wave of cold washes over Sam, leaving his bones chilled, his heart stopped. “It’s you.”
And then the merry-go-round stops playing its music.
Sam wakes up on November second with Jess curled up against his back, warm and safe. Her tiny face is scrunched up in sleep, and, looking at her, Sam feels like maybe it was all just a bad dream – a very detailed, vivid, horrible, bad dream.
Just in case, Sam slides out from under the warm sheets and pads into the kitchen, grabbing one of their wood-block knives and bringing it back to bed with him. Jess doesn’t make a sound as fire explodes around them both and the world breaks into a million splintered pieces.
“Sam? Oh, thank god.”
Dean’s face swims into focus in Sam’s line of vision, eyes wild and huge, skin streaked with drying, rust-colored blood. His hands are on either side of Sam’s face, cupping his cheeks like he’s going to fall apart. “I thought you weren’t coming back, man. Don’t do that to me.”
Coughing, Sam sits up with the help of Dean’s hand on his back. Once he’s up, he takes in their surroundings – the ground is burnt in a perfect circle, the air smells like sulfur. “What happened?”
“I have no idea,” Dean admits.
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But very cool :)
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oh Sammy!
that was very cool.
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Just in case, Sam slides out from under the warm sheets and pads into the kitchen, grabbing one of their wood-block knives
This gave me goosebumps. It's terrifying and so well played out, echoing the beginning. Wonderful, darling!
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Creepy and very well done. :-)
Cheers ~
Erin
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But! Thank you, honey. *kisses*
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I understood this as Sam's own battle, the fact that he was stuck inside that dorm room with Dean on the outside trying to be his support. He had to let go of Jess - of that night in which she dies - before he could move forward - i.e. time being pulled back constantly. He just had to give into the fact that it was done.
Sory if I totally misinterpreted but it is what I saw and I love you for it. Such a wonderful way to tell the story, so new and fresh for the fandom. Great work.
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*Squishes you*